Good morning and welcome to the weekend.  Normally I would have curated a few stories and updates about books for you to peruse.  But this morning I simply want to share some thoughts about the last few weeks of news.

I’ve been thinking about all the allegations of sexual harassment that we’re hearing/reading/watching in our news streams and how to react and deal with these in a way that makes sense.  It seems to me that what is missing amongst the outrage and the venom is a careful inspection of the facts, an offer of grace for those who have sinned, and a differentiation between each case (they aren’t all the same). But the main thing that is missing is a way forward that is not complete tyranny. 

This reality drove home to me the difference between how the world works, and how God in His grace works. The world wants to sensationalize sin and then wonders why people are exploited. The world wants to marginalize and tyrannize one group to the exclusion of others as a response to marginalization and exploitation. In other words, the world’s (with the media being the expression of this) reaction to sin is to douse us with even more sin. In one very important respect, it is good for victims to be able to tell the truth, though from its outset America has been a comparatively open society for those desiring to tell the truth. So that is healthy – freedom begets both lux et veritas.

The problem we now face is environmental. An environment of liberation without diligence for truth can, and indeed has, very quickly turned into toxic tyranny. This is manifested in the oppression of accusation and finger pointing in response to the tyranny of exploitation and sexual misconduct. Generalizations flying, battle lines forming, slander spoken faster than anyone has the ability to refute or clarify. It is becoming harder for truth to be found, and this actually works against victims – though it works for ratings.

Watching the media over the last few weeks has been like pulling up a front row seat at Madame DeFarge’s knitting exhibition. We are on dangerous ground, stray but a little to the right or left and our society will be in great peril.

Don’t mistake me for siding with or against someone – I am perfectly horrified by what these elected officials have done. Even friends of mine, people I thought I knew, have resigned in disgrace this week – all the while putting a happy face on the thing or not completely even admitting their sin, and thus further enabling rumors and slander to run rampant.

But the main question I want to put to you in the midst of this is: what is the way forward?  The world is not going to offer a viable way forward. There will be no end to the toxicity – it will only get more rank.  The way forward isn’t simply codifying behavioral ethics in an H.R. document and forcing people to go through “training” – this behavior is so obviously wrong that no one ought to need such training! The fact that this is so is manifested in the well-warranted outrange of horrified Americans who are watching their elected leaders being outed as perverts.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out the gross irony in these stories. Perhaps this week’s allegations against Sen. Al Franken best typify that irony, for if he had behaved the way he did in real life during an on-screen performance, it would have been called “art” or “just another movie.”  In short, Hollywood has trained Americans to think sexual depravity is normal. We have swallowed these lies hook, line, and sinker. And so, in a round about way, we celebrate exploitation as we chuckle at perversion in our living rooms. And now the world is outraged when people (actors like Franken, for example) behave this way in real life…where do you think they got all the perverse ideas for their on-screen behavior?

I believe that the world as typified by those in the media writing the stories, those in Hollywood and people in the Halls of Power around the country, cannot adequately deal with these issues because they lack both the moral authority to do so, and the power of grace to rebuild the brokenness that remains. They will either descend into injudicious accusatory and sensational anarchy, or they will normalize the disgusting and exploitive behavior.  In fact, they may end up doing both simultaneously.

Only (yes an exclusive claim) Jesus Christ has both the grace to say “neither do I condemn you” and “go and sin no more.”  Only Christ can justly say “this is wrong” and “you are forgiven.” There is a balance to the message of Christianity – not because WE bring balance to it, but because our darkness, our sinfulness is both exposed by His light and washed clean and forgiven by Christ’s mercy and God’s justice which Christ bore.

In one respect, it is times like these that expose the utter sinfulness of sin. You don’t think men and women need Christ’s death? You think He paid an awful cost for no reason? These are the reasons. This is the sickness that drove Him to that hill and which nailed those spikes in His hands. I defy you to turn on the news and then tell me men don’t need a Savior and that victims don’t need a Redeemer.  

While we all rightly find ourselves disgusted by the sin we see in these news stories (apparently Hollywood has not so desensitized us yet that we can still find some sense of outrage over sin), let us not be so quick to forget our own sin. Let us not be so quick to forget that for victims and for their violators there is a way forward that doesn’t involve slander and bitterness and secretiveness.

I would encourage you to read an old column from Jon Bloom to help clarify these thoughts some more. Not every Biblical example is going to be a perfect one-to-one correspondence with what we’re seeing in today’s news cycle. But the principles are there.

This isn’t a soapbox plea. It’s a reminder to all those who claim to be Christian that we hold truths so powerful that lives truly can be mended, reputations rebuilt, and, most importantly, souls redeemed and minds and hearts renewed. We can come to the aid of the victims without being surprised by the sinful natures of men that made these things possible, and the culture that elevated the sin as entertainment in another setting.  We can offer healing to the broken, and grace to those who wish to repent of their wrong. And we can do this all without forgetting who we are, and where we would be without Christ’s sacrifice.

That’s it for today, I hope you have a great weekend.

PJW

Welcome to the weekend, the weekend reading is below, but first, happy birthday to my darling wife Kate!

Just a few articles for you to consider…

There are some shifts going on in the culture, and not always in a good way.  This past week the lead pastor of Hillsong Church appeared on The View – that’s the first hint that there may be trouble – and appeared ambivalent about whether or not abortion was murder. Think about that for a minute. The lead pastor of one of the most well-known churches in the evangelical world can’t even come down on what is normally considered a softball for anyone serving in ministry. Heck, millions upon millions of people who aren’t followers of Christ consider abortion murder. I am not naive enough to think that this guy is some theological dynamo, but he is admired by many younger Christians and has a significant following internationally.  Why do I point this out? Because 1. its good to know where leaders stand on key issues, as it helps to explain what their followers/admirers think and 2. as an offshoot of 1, its helpful in explaining microtrends among groups of people. When their leaders shift one way, they might shift that way as well.

This was pretty sad stuff. I didn’t know that Halladay was one of only two men to have pitched a perfect game in the post-season…ever.  Amazingly talented guy.

Interesting: Why Does the Season Before Winter Have Two Names?

Another thing to take a look at.  This is a powerpoint put together by some ex-Bush administration politicos who are positing the idea that we’re living in the midst of a new gilded age. I don’t doubt that they are on to something.  Over at Axios, Mike Allen has been pushing this idea for quite some time. This PPT is a bit dated – to a few months back – because I hadn’t reviewed it yet, and I was curious as to how it was standing up to the test of the fall elections.  In some ways, they were off, and in others, they were spot on.  We see all kinds of evidence of this, and they seem anecdotal – stories like this one pop up in our news feeds: The Most Expensive Bottle of Wine Ever Sold Is a $350,000 California Cabernet Sauvignon.  I am not making a moral conclusion to this data, but simply musing on it, and think it’s worth considering for future conversation.

This is a must-read: Sean Parker: Facebook was designed to exploit human “vulnerability”. I think it makes a ton of sense to say that people are getting addicted to FB and other social streams – many people wouldn’t deny that its possible – but what’s so revolutionary about this article is that these guys who created FB are now saying “ya, we want it to be like that…” (so to speak).  They want you to spend all your time there. But what we might see in the future are more scientific studies showing that the lack of attention span and other brain malfunctions are a direct result of the “Feedback loop” we put ourselves in online.

Of course, the other consequence of this feedback loop is that we created worlds online in which everyone agrees with us, and everyone who doesn’t is labeled as spewing hate speech.

To that end, check out this New York Times article: What Does Facebook Consider Hate Speech? Take Our Quiz.  The irony of this is not in the quiz itself but in the fact that there exists a feedback loop of sorts between the liberal media writers at the Times and the liberal corporate execs at Facebook. Note especially near the end of the story this paragraph:

In response to questions for this piece, Facebook said it had changed its policy to include age as a protected category. While Facebook’s original training document states that content targeting “black children” would not violate its hate speech policy, the company’s spokeswoman said that such attacks would no longer be acceptable.

So the New York Times got their liberal readership to pay attention to this ageism gap in the FB hate speech quiz, and in response, Facebook altered their policies.  Now to give this context, can you imagine if The Weekly Standard, or Red State, or even the Washington Times or Wall Street Journal posted a quiz online and had Facebook change its policies based on that quiz or writing from its conservative readership?  NO WAY!  That would never happen.  That is because the NY Times is inside the feedback loop, it’s inside the liberal echo chamber. I’m not saying that conservatives (and I think particularly communities inside evangelicalism) don’t have this same phenomenon.  But the difference is that liberals are now running corporate America, and major social and communications platforms. What are the consequences of this?  That free speech is going to be regulated more and more by the left, and with the left in America moving more and more TO the left, we’re going to see ripple effects in the way in which people talk, what they say, and how they say it.

I somehow missed this until I stumbled on it at Target…pretty cool.

More tech – did anyone else notice how frustrating typing the word “I” has been on your iPhone this past week or so??? The Wall Street Journal talks about it here. 

In light of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Tim Challies asked if Christians need to be considering more closely their relationship to Hollywood.  The crux of what he’s saying could be more bluntly paraphrased: “Why are you surprised? We’ve seen this kind of behavior on the silver screen for years now…where did you think these ideas came from? They came from sexual predators who wrote the scripts!”

Which leads me to post this article by John Piper which I thought spot on: Do Men Owe Women a Special Kind of Care?  Spoiler Alert: yes, yes they do.

I hadn’t heard much about this story until someone at the National Review wrote about it. Apparently, there were two men who chased down the killer of those folks down in the Texas church massacre. I heard something obliquely spoken of on the radio, but I was distracted with driving (some irony there) and didn’t know the full story until I read this piece: In Texas, Two Very American Heroes.

That’s all I really have time for today. I hope you enjoy your Saturday – happy reading!

PJW

Welcome to the weekend!  I hope you are all doing well. I am traveling today so have just a few moments to share some reading for your weekend. Weekend Reading lightening edition!   (:

First, I’m going to have to say there was a lot of stupidity out there this week. Let’s start where stupidy reigns: The New York Times.  Modern liberal Catholic (despite himself) writer Ross Douthat who is widely read asked ‘Who Won the Protestant Reformation’ and his reflection tends toward the answer being “modern western liberalism” (although it’s hard to sort through his snide jumbled prose).  I am posting this here because its valuable to know what these kinds of people think. This is the cream of liberal elite thinking, so it is instructive. Douthat doesn’t address the arguments or the real reasoning behind the need for religious reformation, but looks instead at the flow of history with all its bloody excesses and sin and concludes that while we got modernity out of it eventually, there are many “unremembered dead” as well. He assumes that many of the dead died for nothing – as if in ignorance they fought for something small minded and trite. Quite the opposite was the truth when it comes to the days of reformation in the 16th century – and even so with those a priori forerunners who translated the Bible into the common vernacular in order that men may not be ignorant, exploited by the church, and might have joy and eternal life. Sounds worthwhile to me…but heck, I don’t have a Times column so what do I know!

Next, let’s look at stupidity across the pond from another bastion of liberal elitism. The headline is revealing: Prince William warns that there are too many people in the world. There aren’t enough trees and lakes and puppies in the world because we’re overrunning them with human babies. Nevermind that the aforementioned William is producing babies faster than any known man alive. There are two reasons I want to point this nonsense out. First, because wherever liberal elites’ actual views are allowed to surface – are actually admitted in the open – they are shocking and appalling and ALWAYS hypocritical. Second, when played out to their fullest, they often lead to mass killing and genocide (I’m looking at you communism). They are also fraught with irony. Secular Liberals like William who know very little about the average life of an average man, imagine their views would solve the problems of said man, and create a life on this earth that was a little less crowded and a little more enjoyable. Let’s pray for the sake of the lives of Europeans yet unborn that the monarchy in England never again gains any real power and that William rides out his days as he’s done thus far – in utter impotence.

Well…maybe he deserved it: Canadian man fined for singing ’90s dance tune in car

This is crazy:  Pakistani bride kills 17 in botched plot to kill husband

Multiple people sent me this article this week, AND I saw Mohler posted it, and I think Challies posted it…must have struck a nerve: The Politicization of Motherhood. It fits nicely right after the story by modernist liberal Douthat.

I stumbled on this video which I found amusing: The Surprisingly Mysterious Life of Famed Artist Bob Ross

Funny story here: Add Sugar to the List of Halloween Horrors (subtitle: Experts at the American Chemical Society determined the lethal dose for so-called fun-size treats).

Interesting: The U.S. Senate Has Been Using the Same Ivory Gavels for Over 200 Years

In case you missed it: Amazon Turns a Financial Report Into a Marketing Event.

This was enjoyable and interesting: Time Travel in Fiction Rundown.

That is it on the articles side – can you believe that I had something absolutely nuts from all over the globe!? haha!

Books….I finished David Copperfield this week and immensely enjoyed it. Kate and I had been reading it together for months. Kate’s favorite character was Agnus. My favorite characters were David’s eccentric Aunt, and his “friend of his youth” Mr. Wilkens Micawber.  Micawber uses (abuses?) the English language with such flourish that every time he would digress I would split my sides. The phrase “pecuniary emolument” was jestingly in frequent use in our house over the past weeks, much to my enjoyment!

That’s it – I hope you all have a great weekend!

PJW